Hey folks, I'm doing a full restoration on a Spirit; the thing that I'm stuck on is the metal ball guides (the sheet metal ones, not the wire forms.)
The ones that came with the game are usable, but no amount of Mother's mag polish will make them truly shiny, as it looks like Gottlieb used plated metal rather than stainless steel. These have corrosion/pitting which at best would only be held at bay with a good shining and waxing.

I'm hesitant to spray primer and metallic paint on these as I just think it will make them look spray painted, but I also am not set up to try and stamp my own replacements. Is anyone making repro guides? What are Gottlieb owners doing to restore these, if not replacing them outright?

I need to replace the backbox motor for Spirit; I heard it said that you cannot use the same motor as people were using in Black Hole rebuilds, which seems very surprising to me.

Any insight into that from you System 80 veterans?

I don't know for certain that there actually is a problem using the same motor that people use for Black Hole. It seems extremely unlikely that there was a significant difference between 2 system 80 games that came out, what, within a year of each other?

There is a company called ServoCity which has motors and mounts which work for Black Hole. I'm probably just going to go ahead and get the necessary parts from there. Will report back once I get toward the end of the restoration!

I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that the Black Hole motor at most had different gearing and therefore spun at a slower or faster rate. Someone who understands clockwork could maybe figure out exactly what the gearing is supposed to be,lol, but as long as it’s in the right ballpark for how fast it spins and it isn’t gonna make anything catch fire…

Thanks to everyone who posted about this!
Gotta love those “Out Of Stock Forever” Marco listings!

Damn. Somehow missed the point entirely, lol. Guess I was trying to hear what I wanted to hear…
How weird that they used such a different configuration for basically the same end. Gottlieb were a wacky bunch.

The ServoCity site seems only to have DC motors. I’d welcome pointers if anybody has ideas. So far my Google searches come up empty.